The Little Things
by aroseisarose
Summary: It's the Yo Yo Ma CD that he was planning on giving her for Christmas that is sitting on his bookshelf.rnCharacter death.


The Little Things

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, I just like to take them out and play with them. So, yeah, no suing please.

Author's Note: First off, thank you very much to my lovely beta Heather who kicks serious arse when it comes to being a beta. Secondly, this is set sometime after the presumed Santos administration and Sam is somewhere in DC being a Congressman. Please review, they make my day like whoa. Also, note that flames will be used to make toasted marshmallows.

Sometimes he thinks that tomorrow it will be easier. Sometimes he thinks that he'll walk into the office and there she'll be, sitting there and working on something like nothing ever happened. Sometimes he thinks that she is just visiting her parents and she'll be back on Monday, but Monday never comes. Sometimes he thinks that he'll find a voicemail on his phone telling him about some meeting that got squeezed in at the last moment or how this or that report will be ready by the end of the day. He just wants to hear her voice for a little while. Sometimes he thinks he'll wake up in the middle of the night and everything will be right again. Not that things were ever exactly right with them, but it was something. It was more than something… it was them. Now that that's gone, it doesn't really matter.

Now it's the little things that he remembers. It's the Yo Yo Ma CD that he was planning on giving her for Christmas that is sitting on his bookshelf. When it snows, he thinks of throwing snowballs at her window. On hot summer nights, he can see them sitting on his couch talking until all hours of the morning with the windows wide open. He still gets a sad smile on his face when he uses his keycard. It is why he lives in the Mets sweatshirt she gave him for his birthday one year. When he stays up late working, he thinks can feel her run her hand lightly across his shoulders in that comforting gesture that had become so routine. In the spring, when he walks on the Mall, he can hear her laughing like she did when he surprised her with that picnic for their anniversary. Sometimes he'll walk by a woman how uses the same shampoo as her and the scent will bring back more than he wishes. There are a million moments a day that wash over him and he always feels like he is drowning in the onslaught. He doesn't live anymore; he merely tries to survive.

He hates the way life has carried him on. Some days he won't think of her until that night when he forces his mind away from the office. After all, it has been two years, seven months, three weeks and four days. He doesn't want to go on, he wants to go back to when he knew what he was going on, when there was some control. Sure, they never spoke about such things, but it was there and they never needed the words. He doesn't think that they ever needed a definition; they simply were who they were together. He wants to go back to the early days, he wants to go back to that first day they met, just so that he could relive it over and over again. They were so young back then, so unaware of everything that was going to happen to them: a shooting, a car bombing, political scandal, never ending days, and a love, a bond, that was more powerful than time. If only they had known. Then again, if they had known, maybe one of them would have walked away, said in the end it wouldn't be worth it.

Some nights he wonders what would have happened if they had never met. He wonders if he ever would have gotten over his father's death, he wonders he would have survived Rosslyn, he wonders if he would be who he is. He wonders if she would have gone back to Dr. Freeride and had her own family in Madison. Perhaps she would have seen him on TV on some talk show while she was tending to her own children and thought him to be a pompous ass. Maybe she would have seen something in him still. She would have been okay then, she would have been safe from him. He wonders if they would have ever been happy apart, and he thinks that they would have, it just would have been a different kind of happy. Their happy was one that was corrupted with a pervasive melancholy, a state that he had never known before her. He thinks that he would still be here at this end, but then again, he could never imagine his life before her. He went thirty-six years without knowing her, and now, it just doesn't seem possible.

Saturdays still make him sick. She died on a Saturday and it was all his fault, or so he thought. He was the one who sent her home early on Friday, said that she had been working too hard and told her to have a good night off. He could manage without her for a night. When he said that he wasn't planning on having to have to manage without her for the rest of his life. It was Sam who called him in the early hours of Saturday, told him to get down to the hospital right away, that something awful had happened. Every once and a while he still will feel that cold shutter run down his spine when the phone rings. Right before he falls into what he calls sleep now, he can hear the shattering of glass and bones, the crunching of metal, her screaming his name but only getting out part of it. Sometimes in his dreams he can still see her broken body on the gurney, her body set adrift on a sea of medical paraphernalia and shattered dreams. Her bloody face still haunts his dreams. They never caught the guy who did this to her, and he still wonders if he has run across him.

There are few people who understand his pain. Sam does, because Sam loved her too, she was like his little sister. For along time it was the three of them, they would go out, have a beer, be a family in their own twisted way. Toby does because he could not imagine what he would do if something ever happened to CJ, and CJ understands because she could always see right though him. They talk to him about her, about the good times when they visit, they want him to remember all that was right with them, not how it leapt off the rails somewhere down the line. They tell him that there was more good than there was bad and the bad really wasn't all that terrible. Leo knows what is like to be down in the hole, but Jenny is still alive. Josh accepts his advice, but he knows what Leo says is impractical. He hasn't been down in this hole. Rhonna knows when not to bother him, but she doesn't know how it was and because of that, she can't understand the present. She came into the game way to late to understand any of it.

He doesn't like to dance anymore. Honestly he never did like dancing, but with her it was something else. He can recollect every single time that they have danced over the years. Sometimes they danced in the bullpen halls, sometimes they danced in ballrooms, and one time, back when he went to Madison for her niece's baptism, they danced on ice. He remembers how her hair fell about her face and how her eyes sparkled when they started. They always sparkled, but he noticed it more then, when he was so close to her, when he could feel her pressed next to him. He always thought it to be an embodiment of who they were together. They pushed themselves together, pulled themselves apart, twirled around and around each other in some inexplicable beauty. He first kissed her when they were dancing at the first Inaugural Ball, it was soft, and it was on her cheek, but it was a beginning. It also ended up being an end.

He always makes sure that her headstone has primrose on it. It was her favorite flower and he sends her mom money every week to make sure that a new bunch gets laid there. He wishes that he could visit her grave and do it himself, but he knows he can't. He hates that she is buried back in Wisconsin; he wants to be near her, even if it is only the ground she is in. He found it ironic that primrose symbolized the sentiment "I can't live without you." He still can't live without her; he doesn't want to live without her. He was always jealous of the other men who came into her life, but he has never been more jealous of Death. Death was able to steal her away from him, bury her in his chillingly cold embrace.

These are the thoughts that run through his mind when he fucks Amy. They never make love anymore; it's only a fuck, a motion that he goes through. It has become an animalistic urge, a desperate attempt to forget the woman he can never have. He used to be a tender lover, one who wooed with sensual bubble baths and full body massages and music and candlelight. Now it's hard and rough and forceful, up against the wall or on top of the kitchen counter. He doesn't love her, not now, that is if he ever did. She knows it too, she realizes that he is in love with Donna's memory. He denies it, he says he's fine, but she knows how he mumbles Donna's name when he spills himself inside of her.

When they have both finished, she rolls off of him and they both stare at the ceiling. They never lay in each other's arms anymore. They don't even debate in bed anymore. Politics used to follow them into the bedroom, but now it is the ghost of another woman. Usually he turns his back to her and turns into his own thoughts. Tonight, though, he looks up at the ceiling fan, noting that he has to tighten the screws as he watches it wobble. Out of the thick silence she tells him that she's pregnant and his breath catches in his throat. He doesn't say anything, but in his mind he screams "Why?"


End file.
